Game Industry Recruiters: How Useful Do you Find Them?
high dynamic range
- Do you guys find it advantageous to find and secure new jobs wtih game recruiters?
- What advantage do recruiters have IFthese jobs are posted relatively clearly and expediently AND if data scraper websites like GrackleHQ do a good job of finding them? Is it a soft skill advantage, like business relationships?
Replies
The worst kind of recruiters are those that reach out to you over linkedin and ask you for your resume and/or portfolio. These things should be on your site anyhow, but beyond that it shows a lack of understanding if they reach out to artists without even seeing a portfolio (mind you I not talking about someone asking you if there is another portfolio site or if there has been an update to your work experience - those a reasonable questions). Not to mention those that have you fill out some forms that they will send to the companies so they don't even have to do that themselves. These are warning signs to me to not take them too seriously and have very low expectations about how much they can actually help you get the job.
Basically recruiters are only useful for headhunting people that already have a job and are not actively searching for one - that's the actual key client for them as well because others apply anyhow and a company is probably not paying recruiters to get just the same applications that they get for free. If you are looking for a job and are sending applications I suggest rather doing the research and targeting the lead artists at those companies and building a relationship with them instead of wasting time with recruiters.
Now this doesn't mean I'm unprofessional answering them, but I don't waste time with recruiters asking me for portfolio links or resume beyond responding friendly to them that I don't have an interest.
I've listened to many horror stories from other game developers, and I've experienced a couple first hand.
If you can find the 2% who are knowledgeable and judicious, they can be a great resource.
Just be careful, do your homework, don't accept any of them at face value.
"linkedin" recruiters or 3rd party recruiters trying to snag a recruitment or referral fee.....avoid. They are not really bringing anything to the table and 9/10x not actually hired by the studio to do recruiting. its just another person to interfere with the communication process and probably slice a few thousand bucks off your potential salary in fees. most of the time they present themselves as a company or gamedev recruitment shop but its 1-2 people working in their basement totally freelance working for commissions.
half the time in their outreach spam they even get your name wrong at the start of their copy paste email, or are asking if you are interested in positions that are not relevant to your experience listed right there on linkedin. it just shows the spambot mindset a lot of them have. they are even starting to infest artstation and use the DM feature there to blast out their copy paste recruiter emails.
unless they are working directly at the studio doing the hiring, best just to avoid them. they are really not going to do anything more than you could for yourself by simply applying through the website.